The Origin of the Bare Life: Politics and Language in the Thought of Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

Although Homo sacer is the best known book by Giorgio Agamben to the contemporary political reflection, he begins since 1968 an uninterrupted query about language’s being. Therefore it’s possible suppose his philosophy of language is the better way to understand  Agamben’s political conception. In the paper below it’s considered the comparison between the books of Homo sacer’s project, some Agamben’s coeval articles and essays about language of the seventies and eighties. In his political researches, where the crucial ideas are presented, are used similarities with what he has written in the previous years about language faculty. Moreover the main guidelines of Agamben’s thought making evident how he proposes his own philosophy of language as a model to overcome metaphysics and biopolitics devices. In this regard it will be analyzed the link between the concepts of Voice and Bare Life which represent the core of his philosophical proposal.